Sandra Ingerman is an American shamanic teacher, author and licensed therapist who trained with Michael Harner and has served as educational director of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. Her book Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self (1991) did a lot to bring soul retrieval to Western readers. She teaches that in trauma a part of our vital essence splits off in order to survive, and that a shamanic practitioner, with the help of their spirits, can find it and bring it home; Therapeutic Shamanism shares much of this, and adds, for modern people, skilful work with the part of us that may not want the lost part back.
Who is Sandra Ingerman? #
A shamanic practitioner and teacher who is also a trained therapist. She holds a master’s degree in counselling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and is licensed as a therapist and counsellor in New Mexico, where she has made her home near Santa Fe.1 She apprenticed with Michael Harner,2 taught alongside him, and has served as educational director and a trustee of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.3 She has been teaching for more than thirty years, internationally, on shamanic journeying and healing.4
Her books include Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self (1991), its follow-up Welcome Home (1993), Medicine for the Earth and Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner’s GuideGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this. Through Medicine for the Earth and the alliance of teachers she trained under that name, much of her later work has turned to healing the land, including what she calls reversing environmental pollution through spiritual methods.5 See What is the Foundation for Shamanic Studies? and Who was Michael Harner, and what is core shamanism?
What does Ingerman mean by soul loss? #
That when something too painful happens to us, part of us leaves in order to get through it. In her words, “a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience.” The causes she names are the hard things of life, such as abuse, incest, the loss of someone we love, surgery, accidents, illness.6
She also holds that these lost parts are not simply bits of the personality that have split off into the unconscious. They go to a particular place in non-ordinary reality, outside ordinary time, and can be found there in the shaman’s journey.7 It was her training as a therapist that led her to this work. She found that psychotherapy “works only on the parts of us that are ‘home’”, and turned to shamanism for the parts that were not.8
How does she approach soul retrieval? #
As a journey made on someone’s behalf, followed by the person’s own work of welcoming the returned parts home. The practitioner enters non-ordinary reality in search of the lost soul partsSoul-part. A small-s, middle-world part of the self that can be lost (sent away) and can be retrieved. Not the capital-S Soul. Read the full answer, with the help of their helping spirits, and brings them back to the person they belong to.
What comes after matters to her as much as the journey. Welcome Home is about the soul’s “journey home after healing”, and puts the weight on the person caring for their own soul, not depending on anyone else to change their life for them, with practices such as rituals for letting go of limiting beliefs.9
Ingerman’s method is her own. Harner himself later developed a ‘core soul retrieval’ for Western students, and noted that its method differs from the one in her book.10
How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand soul loss and soul retrieval? #
In ways that sit close to hers on many points. Soul-lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer is one of the two root causes of illness in shamanism, alongside Power-loss, so soul retrieval is of immense importance in shamanic healing.11 Among hunter-gatherers the main causes of soul loss would have been much the same as the ones Ingerman lists, things like bereavement and broken-heartedness, illness, shock and trauma. Like her, Therapeutic Shamanism sees soul retrieval as something psychotherapy alone can rarely do. It is one of shamanism’s specialisms, and one of its great strengths.12 And like her, it treats the journey as real, not a guided visualisation but an experience of something that exists independently of us.13
The difference lies in what Therapeutic Shamanism sees as the main cause of soul loss today. In modern life we mostly send parts of ourselves away in order to fit in, such as our playfulness, creativity, wildness, sensitivity, anger, tears and so on. Because part of us stayed behind and carried on, ‘holding the fort’, that part, the fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer, may be ambivalent about the lost part coming back, or opposed to it outright, since it was the fort-holder who sent it away to protect us. So simply bringing a soul part back and blowing it into the person is far less likely to work than it once was. For a retrieval to go deep and last, there is usually a process of listening to and negotiating with the fort-holder first, and a time of integration afterwards, as the fort-holder adjusts to the part being back.14 This is where Therapeutic Shamanism brings the skills of psychotherapy and parts work into the shamanic healing itself. Ingerman’s emphasis on the work after a retrieval and Therapeutic Shamanism’s on integration agree on this much, that a soul retrieval is a beginning, not an end. See How does soul retrieval work? and What happens after soul retrieval, and why is integration essential?
Therapeutic Shamanism also teaches that soul retrieval is not where shamanic practice begins. It usually involves work in all the realms, often including a lot of middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer work, and skilful middle-world work needs strong roots in the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer first.15 The parts brought back in a soul retrieval are usually middle-world parts of us, soul with a small s, and not the Lower-World Soul. See What is soul retrieval? and What are child, orphan, fort-holder and protector parts?
